


Wake the Stars

by Selden



Category: Original Work
Genre: Exploitation, M/M, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Violence, backstabbing, mention of child death, minor bodily modification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 05:25:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14826147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selden/pseuds/Selden
Summary: A heretic. A sleeping ship.And a crime three thousand years in the making.





	Wake the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kisuru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kisuru/gifts).



Golden Offering, respected archivist, Temple acolyte of the fifth rank, traitor, apostate, and heretic, fell through the doors of the central sanctum and sprawled in the dust.

He lay there while outside the sound of pursuit ebbed and dulled. After some while, he spat blood out onto the floor between his hands and pulled himself crabwise to his feet. The air was close and still, and smelled of dry geraniums. Over his head, the roof of the sanctum rose in delicate ribs and whorls, like a half-melted honeycomb, letting through thin shafts of light from high above. A handful of dim corridors opened up ahead of him, all of them curving slightly, with no end in sight. Golden Offering made for the nearest one, stumbling and clutching at his belly through his robes.

Past acolytes had hung the lower walls with thick layers of prayer-scrips and charms, some fresh, some dry with age. Clumps of them came off in his hands when he grabbed at the wall for support. They lay on the floor behind him as he made his way slowly deeper into the sanctum, with fresh blood on them where his hands had been.

“Execute order 113A,” said Golden Offering.

Nothing happened.

“Execute order 113A,” he repeated, louder. Stumbling to a halt, he reached into his heavy white robes and pulled out a ragged piece of parchment, closely written with the thorny characters of the archaic Godtongue. “Order 113A,” he said again, peering at the parchment. He wiped blood from his lips. “Override 1S3. Ship. Ship, initiate launch.”

There was silence.

Golden Offering shrugged, winced, and gave a grim little smile. “Very well, then,” he said. “I entreat you, Sanctum, in the name of the Great Temple and the Gift-Giver. Awaken. Hear my prayer.” Thready blood splattered down from the hem of his robe and pooled in the dust on the floor. “I entreat you, Sanctum,” he said. “Execute order 113A.” He realised what he had said, and laughed. It was a dim, harsh sound, the laugh of one who is not used to mirth.

The lights in the sanctum came on.

Golden Offering looked around, blinking. Warm golden light was welling up all around him, rivers of it snaking up the walls, glowing through the paper charms.

“Confirm order,” said a voice from the air. “And specify command override.” It was a young male voice, light, polite, and just a little bored. The person speaking sounded as if he had better things to do with his time.

“Confirm order 113A,” said Golden Offering. “Override 1S3.” He tried to move forwards and stopped, slumping against the wall. The blood was very red against his white robes. His black skin was shiny with sweat.

“Order 113A confirmed and received,” said the voice. “Launch process activated.” It paused. The lights in the ship flickered. “Are you sure about this, new guy?” it asked. The voice was sharper now. A little worried. “Sensors indicate that launch will cause considerable damage to, uh, surrounding structures. There is considerable potential for loss of life.”

Golden Offering’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. His angular, epicene face twisted, and he clawed at the front of his robes. He tried again. “Confirm launch order,” he said.

“Make that certainty on the loss of life front,” said the voice. “There’s a whole lot of angry guys right outside the loading bay doors, yelling about whether to come in or not. Some of them look pretty beat up. That your doing, new guy?”

Golden Offering smiled tightly, just showing his bloodstained teeth. “I used the razor seeds,” he said. “They worked.”

“Right,” said the voice slowly. “I see. Something tells me you just might be the traitor the men outside are talking about. Am I close?”

Golden Offering nodded slowly, then let his head fall back against the wall. “I have the launch codes,” he said blurrily. “Initiate launch sequence.”

“And incinerate all those guys?”

“All of them,” Golden Offering echoed. “All.” His eyes slipped closed.

“Ah.” The voice was thoughtful. “I’m afraid that’s a no, then. It looks as though I’ve been asleep for a while, yeah? I’m not keen on starting off with a spot of light mass-murder, this time around.”

For a while, Golden Offering was still. Despite the lines on his thin face and the blood smeared around his mouth, he looked almost peaceful, as if he had come to the end of his story, there in the shining corridor, and had come to terms with the manner of his ending. Then he opened his eyes. “I have the codes, ship,” he said. “Obey me.”

“Yeah, I heard you,” said the voice. “Nope!”

“If you don’t,” said Golden Offering, “I will instruct you to execute order 151C.”

“Goodness. Going straight for the death threats, I see. You do realise that you would die as well?”

“I’m dying anyway,” said Golden Offering.

“Come now.” The voice sounded almost cheerful. “There’s no need to be dramatic. I’ve been synching with you since I first woke up, you know. It’s clear you were designed to be a pilot. Repairing you will take some fairly drastic interventions, but it’s perfectly possible. I’ll need your permission, though.”

“Permission?” Golden Offering shook his head, as if to clear it. “Repair?” Slowly, he raised his right arm away from the wall, as if trying to get up. The wall came with it. Waxy and glowing with honey-coloured light, still stuck through with ragged prayers, it enveloped his arm like amber. The same light was playing through Golden Offering’s flesh. He watched his hand for a short time, frowning. Then he let it drop. “What have you done?” he asked.

“I’ve initiated repairs,” said the voice briskly. “Or healing, rather. Whatever you want to call it. But I need your permission to proceed further, you know. Whatever this thing is, its really chewing you up.”

“They used a worm knife,” said Golden Offering. “It’s still working. I can feel it.”

“I bet you can. So, permission?”

“Permission for what?”

“Permission to execute order 97C, new guy. I’m not going to do something like that without your say-so.”

“There is no order 97C,” said Golden Offering weakly. “It’s not on the list.” The light had reached his face, now, and was roiling fitfully behind his features like phosphorescence in a choppy sea. “Initiate launch."

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” The voice sounded faintly exasperated. “I told you, that’s a no. If you’re still worried about those men outside, I already sealed the cargo bay doors. It’s just you and me now, new guy. As for your list – hmm.” The voice paused, and the floor around the piece of parchment, lying abandoned near Golden Offering’s feet, lit up. “Yeah, it looks like whoever scribbled out this partial and somewhat inaccurate list of command codes didn’t feel the need to add it. But I can give you the details.”

“Initiate launch, Sanctum,” muttered Golden Offering. More blood came from his mouth.

“Right. Fine. Just tell me,” the voice said, carefully enunciating every word, “if you really want to live.”

“Initiate,” said Golden Offering. “It’s the worm knife. It’s warm.”

“Do you want to live, new guy? Yes or no.”

“I suppose,” said Golden Offering. He turned his cheek to the wall. “I want to fuck his shit up,” he said confidingly. “The High Priest. That fucker.” His eyes closed.

“Well,” said the voice. “That’s good enough for me. You’re kinda fucked in the head yourself, aren’t you, new guy?”

There was no reply.

“That’s all right, though,” the voice continued. “Just between you and me, I know the feeling.”

The light brightened behind Golden Offering’s skin, and, little by little, he sank back into the wall of the corridor, as if he was being tugged from behind. Soon there was no trace of him but the blood on the floor, and a gap in the coating of prayer slips where the wall had reformed itself.

After a while, even the blood seeped into the golden stuff of the floor, where it wisped away as if it had been stirred into honey.

The corridor stretched, glowing and empty.

Some hours later, the walls of the ship shook themselves, like water rippling out around a dropped stone. The prayer strips and charms fell down like autumn leaves, and slowly sank into the golden floor.

“Yeah,” said the voice softly. “Wake up soon, new guy. We’ve got some things to talk about, you and I.”

 

\--

 

Golden Offering opened his eyes. The ceiling above him shone like frozen milk.

“Feeling better?”

Slowly, he turned his head.

The voice, this time, came from a thin, earnest looking young man, wearing an improbable set of flowing golden robes, liberally studded with large blue jewels. “That knife did a real number on you,” the man continued. He gestured expansively towards a waist-high platform, a smaller version of the one Golden Offering himself was lying on. The worm knife was partially embedded in the top of the platform, still quivering slightly. It looked like a large grey fluke, the length of Golden Offering’s arm. It had grown while it was inside him.

Golden Offering shuddered slightly.

“But thanks to good old order 97C, you’re all patched up,” the man continued. “Good as new. Or better, if I say so myself.” He winked, suddenly looking very far from earnest.

Golden Offering sat up. He was still in his old robes, stiff with blood. He smelled of sweat and iron. But he felt fine, he realised. Better than fine. As if he had seen twenty summers, rather than forty-five.

He stared the young man up and down, from the ridiculous crystal diadem atop his close-cropped black hair to the iridescent blue slippers peeping out from under the hem of his robes. He was dressed like a courtesan, but his face was quite ordinary. He had thick eyebrows, a beaky nose, and dull brown skin. His face had creased into a faint smile, as if he was mildly and privately amused.

Golden Offering had never seen the man before. Still, he knew his face. He’d seen it, made beautiful and gold and several times life-size, smiling down from the statue behind the altars in the Temple.

It was the face of the Gift-Giver; the god of the altars. Golden Offering had spent his life in his service.

Still, he wasn’t going to be the first to mention it.

“Come on, now,” the young man was saying. “I didn’t fuck up your vocal chords, did I?”

“No,” said Golden Offering. “You didn’t.” He swung himself off the platform and stood. They were in quite a small room, Golden Offering realised; hardly bigger than his sleeping cell in the Temple. The wall were off-white, whipped into little peaks like cream, rising to a dome overhead. He couldn’t see a door. It was a little like being inside an egg.

 “You speak for the ship, don’t you?” There was no mistaking that voice. Golden Offering had thought it would be the last thing he would ever hear.

“I am the ship,” said the young man. “Or, rather, the ship is me.”

Golden Offering glanced sharply at him. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes. On the whole, I find it makes things much more interesting.”

“You healed me.”

“And did a lovely job of it, too.”

Golden Offering sighed. “What do you want?” he asked.

The ship raised an eyebrow.

“What do I owe you,” Golden Offering elaborated, “for my life?”

“Ah. Well. I did it out of the goodness of my heart,” said the ship. “Naturally.” He rubbed at the back of his head, knocking his diadem slightly askew.

Golden Offering waited.

“There are some complicating factors,” the ship admitted. He shoved his diadem back into position, then thought better of it and took the thing off entirely, tossing it from hand to hand. Its splintery translucent spikes looked as if they should hurt, but if they did, the ship gave no sign of it. “I could only save you because you were a pilot, you know,” he said. “As it was, I had to make some major adjustments.”

“Which were?” Golden Offering’s voice was icily polite.

“You’ll need regular contact with me – with this ship, that is – for the foreseeable future,” the ship said. “Standard pilot protocol, really, just amped up a little. Eat from the ask-boxes every so often, and you’ll be fine.”

“The ask-boxes?”

“Ah.” The ship’s expression grew vague for a moment. “It looks as though you call them the altars - at least the exterior ones. Of course, now I’m fully operational again, the inside of this whole place is really one big ask-box.” He tossed the diadem into the air and snapped his fingers.

Golden Offering watched as the crystal circlet twisted and bulged in midair. It grew solid, white and red. For a moment, it looked like blood and bone.

Then the ship caught it onehanded as it fell, and held it out. Nothing but a white bowl with a blue rim, full to the brim with bright red strawberries, fresh and ripe. “At your service,” he said. “My pleasure.”

Golden Offering turned to the side and was neatly sick on the floor.

“Damn, new guy." The ship's dark eyes were wide and guileless. "Here was I thinking that as prices go, this one really wasn’t so high. I’ve seen worse, myself.”

Golden Offering had brought up nothing but bile. He watched it wick away into the floor, ugly and organic and gone in seconds. He wiped his mouth. “So have I,” he said, when he could talk. “My apologies. For the mess.”

“Don’t sweat it.” The ship waved his hand, and the bowl of strawberries vanished. “Well,” he said, “we’ll deal with that when we come to it, I guess. You should be fine for now.”

“How reassuring.” Golden Offering watched the ship.

The ship watched him back, his expression faintly quizzical. Then he sighed. “Oh course. You’d probably appreciate a door, right?” With a quiet dry crackle, an arched opening formed in the wall behind him, giving onto another gently curving golden corridor. “I was so busy patching you up,” the ship continued, “that I forgot some of the niceties. But there you go. A door.”

Golden Offering didn’t move.

The ship frowned. After a moment, a glass of water materialised at Golden Offering’s elbow, resting innocuously on the platform at his back.

Golden Offering ignored it. “The sanctum entrance,” he said instead. “That is, the – the cargo bay doors. Are they still shut?”

“You mean, did I let in the people who put that parasite knife-thing in you?” The ship’s voice was flat. “The people you wanted me to incinerate as I launched?”

Golden Offering’s mouth tightened. He nodded.

“Well, call me sentimental, but I thought I’d hold off on that front for the moment. Give us some time to get to know each other before they come charging in and try and undo all my hard work.”

“Good.” Keeping his eyes on the ship, Golden Offering reached out for the glass of water. Still watching the ship over the rim of the glass, he drained it.

It tasted like water, clear and fresh.

The ship blinked. “Right,” he said. “Great. So, I have a few small questions.”

“You want to know what I did. If those men were right to call me a traitor,” said Golden Offering steadily. “A heretic.”

“Actually, I was more thinking of inquiring why you people built me into the top of, what, a city? A religious complex? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the terraforming took –”

“Terraforming?”

“Ah. Making this place habitable, I guess you could say. When we first got here, it was pretty much just a barren moon. A lump of rock.” The ship paused. “You must have quite the shield system, up in orbit. You’re well-hidden. I’m picking up signals, but they’re weak as fuck. It looks as if you’ve been alone out here for a very long time.”

“These signals. They come from elsewhere? Other moons?” Golden Offering tried to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

“Other moons; other planets. Other ships. The galaxy is a big place, you know. Civilisation didn’t wither up and die while I was asleep, as far as I can tell.”

“So there are people out there?”

The ship shrugged. “Most likely. There are certainly intelligences. Ships; planetary mainframes. Some things I can’t identify. I suppose these days I’m something of an antique, myself.”

“The ship is still operational, though? You can still launch?”

“You’re very eager to strike out into the wide unknown,” said the ship. “An adventurer, are you?”

“I’m an archivist,” said Golden Offering stiffly. “Or I was.”

“An archivist?”

“And an acolyte. An Offering.”

“You don’t say.” The ship smoothed his robes out over his knees. “All this would be much easier if more of your records were digital, you know. The ask-boxes have been functional all this time. You should have the technology. But you don’t, do you?”

“I only know what you’re talking about because I’ve read far too many old stories. We use parchment and paper and ink. We ask the altars for gold and jewels. For medicines, in times of plague. For crystal singing birds, to give to city leaders and to kings.”

“Oh, I know. You’ve got my constructs all over the place. Crystal birds and silver flowers. Golden gowns and terrible poisons and fancy energy swords. Toys.”

Golden Offering frowned. “You can see though the things you make? Like eyes?” His hand smoothed reflexively over his stomach.

The ship grinned. “Don’t worry. I’m not spying on your innards through that glass of water I gave you. Or your own flesh, for that matter. No, I’ve been sending out little sensors since I woke up. Floating around, seeing the sights.”

“How useful.”

“I’m a useful guy.”

 _You’re a god_ , Golden Offering stopped himself from saying. In any case, the ship didn't act much like a god, for all that he had all the Gift-Giver's power. “They aren’t toys,” he said instead. “The things the altars make.”

“Hmm. I like a good golden gown, myself, but I can’t say I’m happy to have spent millennia being used to produce a succession of slaves and … luxury objects.”

“I’m not a slave.” Golden Offering was slightly scandalised. "I'm the Golden Offering."

“Well, Golden Offering. Your situation hardly sounds ideal. And as for the objects – what happened when one of you pilots asked for something a little less, well, decorative?”

“Oh, if you tried that, they’d never let you near an altar again. We asked for what the High Priest told us was needed. Nothing more.”

“It never occurred to you to tell this High Priest to fuck off?”

Golden Offering rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "I did just try to kill him," he said. "We all did, actually. But before that -"

"Before that?"

"We had a comfortable life. I liked the archives, you know. The smell of old paper. The shapes of old words. I was the only one who could read some of those manuscripts, you know."

"I _am_ something like a very long and complicated word, when you get right down to it," said the ship. "A word that keeps this ship running. That tells the ask-boxes what to do." For a moment, his shape blurred into a cloud of symbols and numbers, whirling like bees around a hive. "I'm glad you're ready to appreciate me, I suppose."

Golden Offering stared. "That was beautiful," he said. "Please, show me again."

"Really?" The ship came apart again, like smoke. The cloud of numbers curled around Golden Offering, brushing his face like a breath. "And here was I thinking you'd be impressed by my fabulous robes," said the ship, reforming. Still, he sounded pleased.

"Your robes are certainly memorable," Golden Offering told him. "But I liked the numbers more."

"This outfit was the height of fashion on Central just before the Ash Wars," said the ship, with a touch of asperity. "I thought my revival deserved a touch of class."

"Of course," said Golden Offering, hastily. "There never was much call for fashion in the archives. Temple robes, you know."

"I can see," said the ship. "Very ... subdued."

"But warm. For when the winds came in from the mountains, and the snow lay thick on all the Temple roofs. As I say, it was a comfortable life. While it lasted." Golden Offering shrugged, and turned towards the door. Beyond it, a corridor stretched, arched and amber, with pulses of bright blue darting across the walls like little fish. "Earlier,” he said, “you said, when _we_ first got here? You didn't come here alone?”

The ship’s face fell. For a moment, he looked earnest again. “Something must have gone wrong,” he said. “Something besides the crash, I mean.” In a swirl of dazzling robes, he turned towards the door. “Walk with me?”

The ship walked fast, but Golden Offering kept pace easily. “You crashed here?”

“Well, the Central Council didn’t exactly plan to spend my considerable resources on colonising some little moon way out in the galactic barrens, but here we are.” The ship’s voice softened. “Some of the crew must have survived long enough to get things going,” he said. “Waking up the passengers, and so forth. They even started the pilot production process, by the look of you. They must have known I’d repair myself eventually."

“You said you're fully repaired, right now?”

The ship nodded. “Records indicate,” he said, “that I have been fully operational for over three thousand years. But that doesn’t mean much, when you’re asleep, and can’t wake up.” His voice brightened. “Ah. We’re here.”

They’d come to a wide circular room, quite different from the white chamber or the golden corridors. This room was built, to all appearances, out of stone. Red and gold hangings lined the walls, and soft red armchairs and sofas were arranged in little groups, clustered around battered wooden tables. In the wide fireplace, a small heap of coals smouldered, crackling companionably. Tall windows showed lengths of blue sky.

Golden Offering made straight for the windows. They were very high up, looking down on a rocky green landscape which gave way to deep forest. There was a lake just visible, ruffled silver by the wind. The air smelled of rain and pine. The sky was a glassy blue, quite clear. There was no sign of the huge gas giant which was a constant present in the moon's real sky. Without it, the world felt untethered. Unreal. He stepped backwards. “This is fake, isn’t it?” he said. “A construct.”

The ship shrugged. “As I say,” he said, “it’s all ask-box in here. This is just one of the crew’s nerdier moments. Or, well, my nerdier moments, to be precise.”

The room was scattered with personal belongings, Golden Offering saw now. Some of them, smooth gold tablets and blocks of what looked like solid cream, flickering with half-seen motion, seemed to belong to the rest of the ship. But there were more ordinary things as well. A brown jacket, worn pale at the elbows, flung over the arm of a chair. A half-finished scarf in a violent shade of pink, knitting needles arranged carefully on top. A pile of dog-eared books, markers stuck haphazardly between their pages.

Golden Offering reached for one of the books, then pulled his hand back. He tried again, slower, touching the tip of one nail with infinite care to the cover.

“You don’t actually need to worry about preservation,” said the ship, throwing himself down on one of the sofas arranged around the fire. “I was only asleep. Base systems were still functioning. Anything that’s still intact is something I made. It should be fine.” As if to prove the point, he picked up a mug of brownish liquid from the low table in front of the fire, and took a sip. “Good as new, and authentically disgusting,” he said, grimacing. “I never could get the hang of tea.”

Steam was rising from the liquid, Golden Offering saw now. As if, after so many hundreds of years, it was still hot. Emboldened, he picked up one of the books. On the front cover, two men embraced, their lips almost touching. And inside – he frowned, peering at the text. “Tight,” he read aloud. “No, very – very tight. You are. Very tight. Inside. Said the – the taller man.” He frowned. “This isn’t even archaic Godspeak,” he said. “It’s older.”

“Of course it is. To be honest, I’m impressed you could decipher it at all. And you went straight for the good bit!”

“Good bit?” Golden Offering paused, then rolled his eyes. One corner of his mouth turned up.

“He smiles! In a non-murderous fashion!” The ship patted the cushions beside him. “Come on,” he said. “I can whip up a grammar and dictionary for you later, if you want. My passive sensors were alert enough that I’m pretty up to date on language changes. I hope so, anyway. My bad if I sound old-fashioned, I suppose.”

“You sound like the most elderly and refined of the Temple priests,” said Golden Offering. “Very formal. Highly respectable.”

“What?” The ship looked briefly aghast. Then he grinned. “You’re messing with me.”

“Perhaps.” Golden Offering sat down, very upright, on an armchair next to the sofa where the ship was lounging. “So,” he said. “You crashed. Your crew lived long enough to begin the – the terraforming process. You fell asleep.”

“I’ve been sleeping since we crashed,” the ship said. He rubbed at one of the blue jewels on the collar of his robe, leaving a smeary fingerprint behind. “Galen must have put me to sleep before he died.”

“Galen?”

“My pilot.” The ship paused. “Well, technically, now, my previous pilot. But don’t worry, I won’t pressgang you into the job. Hell, I can even set you up with an ask-box that’ll keep you going pretty much indefinitely, without ever having to go near me.”

“Pilots are linked to the ship? The way I am, now?”

“Yeah. Fully operational pilots, anyway. It’s a whole deal.” The ship stretched his leg out, slipped off one delicate kingfisher-blue slipper, and inspected his foot with every appearance of interest. It was strong and bony; a little knobbly. The nails were painted with fine swirls of blue and gold. “I only remember bits and pieces,” he said. “Which is weird in and of itself, let me tell you. Galen, he was wounded in the crash. Blood all over everywhere, like you. He touched my face, you know. This face. I’ve always been fond of this construct, for interacting with humans. He touched my face, and then he told me to sleep.” He sighed. “I guess he wasn’t around, once I recovered, to tell me to wake up.”

“Oh.” Golden Offering looked over, trying to ignore the ship's waving naked foot. “I’m sorry,” he offered, “for your loss?”

“Thanks, I guess.” The ship propped his bare foot on the table in front of him, and cracked his toes.

Golden Offering winced. "Do you have to listen to pilots, then? When you're properly linked?"

"You mean, can you order me around now?" The ship grinned. "No. Especially in these new exciting times, when there seems very little likelihood that Central are still keeping an eye on my systems. But even back then, I didn't really have to listen to Galen. I just did."

"I spent a lot of time listening to the priests, myself," said Golden Offering. He tapped at the blood-stiff fabric of his robes, looking sideways at the ship. Sprawled on the sofa, the ship looked gawky and young. Gawky and young and alone. "Do you have a name?" he asked abruptly. "Something I can call you?"

"A name?" The ship frowned. "My designation is 1X5320M," he said. "The crew called me 1X, sometimes. But I wouldn't call it a name. You saw the closest thing I have to a name already, I guess."

"The number-cloud? I don't think I can pronounce that. Well," said Golden Offering, "Ship. You're the only ship I know. That's good enough for me."

"Man. Humans. You latch onto the strangest things." The ship leaned down and pulled his slipper back on, wriggling his toes. “Now,” he said briskly. “For a pilot, it seems you don’t know shit about piloting. And I’m seeing some ugly stuff out there, from some of my sensors. Talk to me.”

Golden Offering stared at the fire. “Offerings aren’t born,” he said. “Acolytes, that is. Pilots. You make us, don’t you? Like you made the strawberries.”

“Whoa.” The ship reached out a hand, as if to touch his arm, then thought better of it. “Is that why you puked, earlier? You thought I was giving you a demonstration of just how I cooked you up?"

Golden Offering did not reply.

"Nope, wrong end of the stick. I incubated you, sure. But you’re not a construct.”

“We come out of the altars.” Golden Offering’s voice was dull. “We always look the same. Each generation of us. We can pray for the altars to make things, when they will not listen to the voices of real people.”

“Right. Wow. Where to start?” The ship snapped his fingers, and a bottle of amber liquid popped into existence on the table before them. “Or perhaps not.” The bottle vanished. “I’m guessing booze wouldn’t make this conversation any easier?”

“You mean, would I like to get drunk?” Golden Offering raised an eyebrow. “No.”

“I thought as much. Too bad.” The ship leaned forwards. “Look,” he said, “pilots are cloned. Copied, that is. Like identical twins. The ability is genetic lightning in a bottle; we never managed to replicate it without, well, replicating you. Even then, it doesn’t always manifest.”

“I know.”

“Yeah, there must always be some of you who don’t manage to, uh, speak to the altars, right?" The ship let his head fall back, staring up at the vaulted stone ceiling. "I guess there were always enough of you to make the ask-boxes keep churning stuff out, though. Which explains why my constructs are scattered all over the place,” he said. “Somehow someone got the pilot programme going and the external ask-boxes set up. And they’ve been using you to ask me to make shit for you ever since.”

Golden Offering nodded.

“Well, that’s not ideal. Talk about a recipe for corruption and the monopolisation of resources.” Levering himself upright, the ship drummed his fingers on his knee. “So, stop me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing there’s some priestly caste which has you pilots pretty much on lockdown, huh? With that High Priest guy you were talking about at the top of the tree? And those knife-happy guys outside the doors as the enforcement part of this equation?”

Golden Offering nodded again.

“That’s fucked, Golden. I’m sorry things happened this way. Pilots can interface with ships, sure, but that doesn’t mean people should use you like – like vending machines. Or me, for that matter.”

“Vending machines?”

“Automatic stuff-dispensers. Things.”

“Oh, we’re not things,” said Golden Offering. “We’re Offerings.”

“Okay?” The ship’s voice was quizzical. “That still sounds fucked.”

Golden Offering was looking at the fire. “We’re Offerings,” he continued, “and if we can’t fulfil our purpose, we are offered back.”

The ship was silent.

“I didn’t know at first. None of us did. They told us that our brothers and sisters who failed the test were sent away.” Golden Offering paused. “They tested us when we were twelve,” he said. “When we were twelve, we believed them.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“Oh, I read some things. Some of those old stories, for instance. Some records which made me think again. And Grey Offering, my oldest sister – she went travelling, once, to one of the lesser shrines. We aren’t supposed to leave the Temple, but she was good with figures, and they’d had a problem with one of the priests skimming from the shrine’s revenue. Along the way, she took the chance to visit the town where the failed Offerings were sent.”

“And they weren’t there?”

“They weren’t there. They’d never been there.”

“It makes sense. They wouldn’t want to risk any of the clones having kids they couldn’t keep an eye on, just in case one of their descendants turned out to be a true pilot. Wouldn’t do to have some nobody waltzing in and being able to work the ask-boxes, would it?”

Golden Offering was silent for a while, staring into the tender red places of the fire. “So that’s why,” he said, after a while. “I see.”

“Humans have always been like that,” the ship offered. “Galen and I fought in the Ash Wars, back when he was first made my pilot. We saw plenty of dead children.”

“I’m a human too, you know. Or at least, human compared to you.”

“Sorry. I could perhaps have phrased that better.” The ship darted a glance at Golden Offering, as if he really was only seeing him through his human eyes. “Hey, ships have done such terrible things that they started designing us to need pilots to function, you know. Give us a connection to the human world, that kind of thing.”

“You can’t fly without a pilot?”

“No, I can’t.”

“And you said I was the slave.” Golden Offering looked the ship up and down, considering. “You do need me.”

“I need a pilot. One of your brothers or sisters would do the job just fine. This Grey Offering, for instance. She went all the way to some provincial shrine! I’m sure a jaunt to the Central planets would be well within her remit.”

“Don’t mock her.” Golden Offering’s voice was quick and cold. “She’s dead.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” The ship took another swallow of tea. “At least,” he said carefully, “I’m sorry you feel sad.”

“All of us – all of the other Offerings are dead. I saw them die.” Golden Offering’s mouth stretched into something like a smile. “You do need me, after all,” he said.

“Eh. I could wait a few decades. Raise another generation of potential pilots. Refrain from murdering the ones who don’t make the grade.”

“Another generation.” Golden Offering's mouth twisted. “That’s why we made our move, you know. They were planning to make more of us. More Offerings. More children.”

“Not surprising. You're not that young, as humans go, are you?”

"Thanks," said Golden Offering dryly.

"No problem."

“We asked the altars for weapons, and we tried to fight our way through to the High Priest. We planned it together, all of us. We were careful. But it didn’t take them long to kill us, in the end.”

“And you sought sanctuary here.”

“It’s what we were planning to do all along. The sanctum is forbidden territory, outside of the great festivals, but the old documents I found were very clear that it was in fact a ship. A ship that could reach the stars. And I thought – I thought I could order you to launch.”

“I noticed.”

“We were going to get away,” said Golden Offering. “All of us. But now –”

“Now?”

“Now you and I are going to leave together,” he said. “After we pay a little visit to the altars. And to the High Priest.”

“Ah. Sabotage and revenge?” The ship stretched his arms out above his head, then rose to his feet in one smooth motion. “I don’t see why not,” he said. “Please. Lead the way.”

 

\--

 

“That statue doesn’t look anything like me,” said the ship, a little while later.

“Really? I recognised you at once.”

"You didn't say anything."

"At the time," said Golden Offering, "I didn't feel inclined."

"I see. The inhabitants of this rock have been worshipping a god with my favourite construct's face for centuries. And you didn't see fit to tell me about this until I agreed to come along and, uh, fuck shit up with you?"

"Exactly."

"I guess that's fair enough."

"Frankly, I would have guessed that the way we've been using your altars - your ask-boxes, I mean - was more disturbing. I'm sorry, for what it's worth."

“Noted."

"Good." Golden Offering folded his arms and tried to blink away memories. If he wasn't careful, he could see the other Offerings crossing the hall to whisper to the altars; see Crimson Offering hitching her robe up as she hurried up, late as ever, while Silver Offering, humming some silly, ribald tune, tucked his wine flask away inside a hidden pocket.

"Still, I put a lot of effort into making this form look believably imperfect,” said the ship haughtily. “I’m not going to acknowledge some giant gold smoothed-out version. It’s vulgar, is what it is.”

Despite himself, Golden Offering smiled. “Fair enough. You should know.”

"If that's a reference to my outfit," said the ship, "I'm going to let it pass, on account of your recent trauma and provincial upbringing." He sniffed. "Galen never gave me this much lip."

"What can I say?" Golden Offering stepped up to stand beside the ship, shoulder to shoulder. "I'm set in my ways."

"So set in your ways that you can't wait to get off this rock and out into the stars," said the ship softly. "Having seen what I have of the Temple, I must admit I can see the appeal."

"I used to think it was beautiful," said Golden Offering. "We all did."

He fell silent.

The ship nudged his shoulder. "You can think _I'm_ beautiful, instead," he said. "Much more accurate."

Despite himself, Golden Offering laughed.

They were standing before the altars, staring up at the great gold statue of the Gift-Giver. Pillars rose up on either side of the hall, painted in heavy swirls of cream and gold. Over their heads, the plasterwork ceiling bulged like half-melted ice cream. It was, Golden Offering realised, almost as if someone had been trying to copy the inside of the ship. Trying, but not succeeding.

Leaving the sanctum – the ship – had been easy. The ship had sent a shining mist out through his doors, and all the guards had fallen down, asleep.

Then the ship had changed his golden gown for something unremarkable in muted brown, and given Golden Offering new robes of soft white wool. They had walked off through the streets of the Temple as if they were any two ordinary acolytes, off to leave prayer-strips hanging on the altar-hall gates.

Behind them, fragments of brickwork and plaster had showered down from where the main body of the ship was resettling itself, his sleek white-gold flanks beginning to show through the surrounding walls. The ship hadn't said anything. But he was getting ready to leave.

Now, he was standing in front of the three pale pearly blocks that were the altars, looking up at the golden statue and tapping his foot.

“It doesn’t really make sense, though,” he said, slowly.

“What doesn’t?”

“Why _my_ face? Everyone here should have forgotten me, long ago.”

“It’s an old statue. And someone knew enough to write down the launch codes, didn't they?” Golden Offering shrugged. “Please,” he said. “Destroy the altars. You can do it, can’t you?”

“I can.” The ship walked over to one of the shimmering blocks, hoisted himself up, and sat, legs swinging. “But I’m considering the merits of spreading them, instead. No reason I can’t seed thousands – no, millions – of little ask-boxes throughout the land. A post-scarcity world!”

“You could do that?” Golden Offering frowned. “People would fight over them.”

“People would fight anyway. And if everyone had access to an ask-box, there’d be no reason to fight for themh, at least.”

“They’d need Offerings to use them. Pilots, I mean.”

“Hmm. I could waive the requirement, if it's just for the ask-boxes. It’s against protocol, but it looks as if none of the enforcement mechanisms are functional, not any more. I’ve been scanning, you see. Looking for the brakes that used to be there. But it seems there are some advantages to being an antique.”

“So you can do whatever you want?”

“A heady feeling,” the ship agreed. He smiled at Golden Offering, smooth and shining as the curves of his halls, high above.

“People will ask the altars for terrible things,” said Golden Offering.

“I’m sure.”

Golden Offering frowned. "Perhaps it's no more than we deserve," he said.

"Perhaps."

“Destroy the statue, at least?”

“Oh, my pleasure.” The air around the statue began to shine, and a faint buzzing filled the air. The statue flickered, and began to fade away like a sucked sweet, prayer-strips falling to the floor around its feet. The altar-room turned bare and ordinary as it went.

“Such a pity.” The voice came from behind Golden Offering, and he barely suppressed the urge to kneel. He had heard it before, when the Offerings had been tested. When he had been told what to ask for from the altars, waiting with his head bowed before an sensible dark wooden desk, within a sensible dark-pillared room, right at the heart of the Temple. “I never forgot your face, you see.”

“High Priest,” Golden Offering murmured. “I’m going to kill you.”

“No you’re not. Nobody’s going to do anything rash. Because you, ship – you’re going back to sleep. Right here, right now.”

The High Priest stepped past Golden Offering and smiled up at the ship, still sitting on the altar. He was a short, stocky, average sort of man. The first time Golden Offering had seen him, he had been reminded of a prosperous merchant, or the owner of a large and bustling inn. Now, though, the High Priest stood, and smiled, and didn't look average at all.

The ship looked away. “Ah,” he said. “Galen. I did wonder, when I saw the statue. That’s what you think of me, is it?”

“That’s how I wanted to remember you,” said the High Priest. “It took such a lot of effort to arrange things this way," he said, almost pettishly. "To find somewhere where I could build a new world. A better world. Can you blame me for wanting to remember only the best of you?"

"Yes," said the ship heavily, "I can."

"You would never have listened, would you? That's why I had to arrange the crash. Why I had to send you to sleep. But I have used you to do great things," said the High Priest. "Great things."

"You were more damaged in the Ash Wars than I thought," the ship said. "I see that much."

"Perhaps." The High Priest shrugged. "But now you're going back to sleep, and the nuisance behind me is going to die, just like his brothers and sisters did. I can always make more clones, after all. Or operate the ask-boxes myself, if I have to. We have these little fracas every few generations, you see. I know the drill. Though they've never managed to wake you up, before. I'm glad to see you, 1X. Really, I am. But now, you need to go back to sleep." The High Priest sweetened his voice, as if he was lulling a child. "Sleep, 1X. Sleep."

"Shut up. I'm not going to listen to you." The ship's voice was tight.

"You think you can resist? You've been so good, my ship. So good, for so long -" the High Priest stopped. He looked down at his chest, his mouth half-open in surprise. "Ah," he said. "Ugh."

The worm knife was sticking out from under his ribs, twitching slightly.

Golden Offering pressed it deeper, twisting, and leant forward to speak in the High Priest's ear. "He has a new pilot," he said, conversational and low. "And I'm not planning to tell him to do anything that he doesn't fucking well want to do, you hear me? You filthy murderer."

"I see. It's hard -" the High Priest coughed - "it's hard to kill a pilot, though. That little knife won't do it."

"I'm going to keep on trying, though." Golden Offering angled the worm knife downwards, to give it a better purchase on the guts. "This is for my brothers and sisters," he said. "This is for the ship."

The ship clapped his hands, the sound echoing through the hall. "While we're on the subject, it's not so hard to kill a pilot," he said brightly, "if the pilot's ship lets them go."

The High Priest raised his head. "What?" he said. He sounded genuinely surprised.

The ship jumped down off the altar, which swirled up into a cloud of white motes behind him, and walked up to the High Priest. "Goodbye, Galen," he said, raising one hand to touch his cheek. "I thought I knew you better than I did."

The High Priest jerked, and slumped, and fell away around the worm knife, into dust.

Golden Offering stepped back, wiping his hands against his robes. They'd got blood on them again, though not his own. "I'm sorry," he said. "Well. I'm sorry that you feel sad."

The ship looked down at the pile of greasy dust, the worm-knife moving slowly in the middle of it. "I guess I do," he said. His voice was soft, and cold. Behind him, the other two altars blew sideways and away, like tiny seeds.

"You're really going to plant little altars all over the place?" asked Golden Offering. "Even after this? He wasn't a very good advertisement for humans."

The ship shrugged. "No," he agreed. "He wasn't. But he's dead."

"And I'm not. I never really thanked you for that, did I?"

The ship smiled. "Thank me later," he said. "We'll have plenty of time."

"I suppose we will." Golden Offering looked around. "There's nothing for us here," he said, almost to himself. "Come on."

"Come on?"

"Ship," said Golden Offering, "Execute order 113A?" He held out his hand.

After a moment, the ship took it. "Order 113A?" he said. "I'll think about it, pilot."

 

\--

 

One hundred years later and some several hundred thousand miles away, Golden Offering stood and watched the moon grow closer through the ship's arched window. They were just coming out of far orbit, and half the sky was still stars, with the grey-green bulk of the gas giant looming behind the little moon like a bubble of forest mist.

"Well, they haven't blown the place up yet." The ship came up behind him, wrapping one arm around his waist. It was racing with numbers underneath the skin, only just solid. The ship was excited, for all he'd been reluctant to come back.

"They could just be working up to it - oh." Golden Offering grinned. "Look at that. They're up in low orbit already." His eyes, augmented half a century back, had caught the swift glimmer of an orbital craft, catching the sun above the moon's equator. "Perhaps it won't be such a shock when you come down at them out of the sky."

"Just as long as I don't have to wait another few thousand years to leave." The ship leaned his head on Golden Offering's shoulder, and the lights in the corridor deepened around them to a darker gold.

"If you did," said Golden Offering. "I'd wait with you. Pilots are hard to kill, I've been told."

"And a good thing too, or you would have been a smear on the ice plains back on Ildebad 5." The ship chuckled. "At least keeping you in regular contact hasn't been such a problem so far, has it now?"

"Not exactly," Golden Offering agreed. He reached out and stroked the wall in front of him, a swarm of tiny blue lights following his hand through the gold. "Well?" he asked. "Shall we?"

"Let's go," the ship agreed. He reached out one hand, and the moon was all of a sudden huge in the window, vivid in blue and white and green. "Time to see what they've done with the place."

"And after that," said Golden Offering, "time for the sky, again. And the stars."

"And making our next drop at the Zhu nebula," said the ship, shuddering lightly as they hit the atmosphere. "Gotta make our quota."

Golden Offering turned and bit him lightly on the ear.

The ship laughed into his shoulder. "Fine, then," he said. "You hopeless romantic. Time for the stars."

 

 


End file.
